Remaining Long Format – Part 8 – Music Videos #1
Michael Jackson sold countless of albums, countless physical singles, countless downloads and has countless audio and video streams. What if I tell you his most mind-blowing numbers come from none of those formats?
Back in 1984, a music video selling 50,000 units worldwide was considered a sales beast. The Making Of Thriller broke every record reaching 1 million in no time. It was only matched by Michael Jackson‘s next videos, Moonwalker and The Legend Continues which continued to out-do the competition by more than 10 to 1. Soon, selling well over 1 million videos was almost normal for him and even a 2-VHS pack with already released sets was achieving half a million sales.
Several of those videos are themed after a specific studio album as shown by the Album column. Those represent tremendous additions to the already massive numbers achieved by them all.
“Billie Jean” recently topped 1 Billion plays on Spotify!!!
993,017,697 + 3,798,470 + 2,500,913 + 1,274,583 + 47,353 = 1,000,639,016
A huge achievement from this 39 year old Pop classic!
A few days ago, Billie Jean was predicted to be played 1 billion on spotify.
Billie Jean is a very important song in the history of popular music.
I listen to Billie Jean every day.
How much did We Are The World sell? It was hugely successful and The New York Times reported it as the best-selling single of the 80s.
Orphan is not a Michael Jackson album
Orphan means songs that are not included in his studio albums.
Hi, do we know how much “Thriller 25” sold since 2009 please?
“Beat It” is the 2nd track from “Thriller” to pass 500M streams on Spotify! It’s the 6th pre-2000 album to achieve this. Here are the top 5 albums based on their 2nd biggest track, all 5 are Hard Rock albums btw. Biggest 2nd track race: 1. Nirvana “Come As You Are” (“Nevermind” – 1991) – 617.2M 2. Metallica “Nothing Else Matters” (“Metallica” – 1991) – 595.2M 3. Guns ‘N Roses “Welcome to the Jungle” (“Appetite for Destruction” – 1987) – 578.6M 4. Bon Jovi “You Give Love A Bad Name” (“Slippery When Wet” – 1986) – 509.9M 5. AC/DC “You… Read more »
Maybe you’re wondering why Queen are missing from these lists, after all they are arguably the true streaming masters among 20th century artists. But the reason is that their top SEVEN tracks on Spotify are from seven different albums! Amazing actually. Their #8 track “We are the Champions” is the 2nd biggest track on “News of the World” with 480.7M, and rank #9 in the “Biggest 2nd track race”. And what about other 20th century artists with huge Spotify tracks, like Oasis, Mariah Carey, Journey, Toto, A-ha, the Eagles, Earth Wind & Fire and the Police? Well, while hardly one-hit-wonders,… Read more »
Thanks! I love these lists!
thanks!!!
Will you do an update soon? This article was over 3 years ago.
His sales in Japan seem relatively weak for his overall Asai sales ..any reason?
It’s not that they’re weak there, he’s among the very top international sellers in Japan. It’s just that his sales in places like China, India, Taiwan and South Korea were utter massive and unmatched by any other western act at his time. You could argue he was the first western artist to ever break into the mainstream in some of these countries.
How did Madonna issue albums in a much more favourable era?
She had her peak with him and they both released albums in late 90s and early 2000s, Madonna released more.
Hi Jake!
The Stones too released albums in the 90s / early 00s, it isn’t that much relevant when we look at the sales environment they had. Invincible is far and away Jackson’s weakest album. What makes a difference is the period when an artist enjoys his hey-days. He peaked (obviously) in 1983 and the barycenter of his success through the years isn’t that much later. Madonna’s one is 6-8 years later, and the market in early 90s was already way bigger than in mid-80s.
Didn’t most of Madonna albums flop in the 90s? She just had one successful album with Ray of Light!
I don’t think an average of 10.3 million in the 90’s (without Ray of Light) is a flop 😗. Don’t confuse a flop with not being as ridiculously huge she was in the 80’s.
Average of 10 million?
Immaculate Collection is a compilation, it doesn’t count.
None of her albums except ROL sold 10 million in 90s.